A friend of mine told me this story about his encounter with emus when he was in the army. (The odd format is because this is a copy-paste from the client we used to chat.)

"Native to Australia, but in the mid to late 90s there was a brief craze in the US where people thought they were the future in livestock, and folks flushed millions down the toilet investing in Emu Ranches."

"Well when people failed to make overnight millions, a lot of the farms went abandoned. And soon, we had Emus wandering around Texas like they owned the place."

"Well one of the selling points of emus was that you don't actually have to care for them. They wander around living off of god knows what and when it's time you just come and harvest a chunk of them."

"Anyway, when I was in the Army, an emu beat my entire squad pretty much."

"It was night in the hills around central Texas. We were conducting a field exercise. I was a young, cheeky faced medic asleep in the back of a Bradley IFV, which is basically a transport vehicle with a LOT of guns. Most of the rest of the squad were spread around the bradley, the crew were asleep in their seats. Supposedly two people were up a sentries but I don't remember them doing anything useful. The time was zero-dark-thirty, which is military code for "We don't know what time it is but it was at some ungodly hour of the night.""

"All of a sudden somebody there's some kind of weird commotion. Someone starts yelling "Captain Daniels! Captain Daniels!" like a little kid having a nightmare calls for his daddy."

"We all stir and come crawling out, wondering wth was going on and thinking we were under "attack" (fake, training attack, but attack). The captain, soundly asleep in the turret of the Bradley starts telling everyone to calm down, meanwhile we can hear this guy flopping and thrashing around nearby. The captain turns on a spotlight on the bradley. We see our squadmate flopping around on his back, swatting at an Emu pecking determinedly at his forehead."

"Now the army has very strict rules about harming wildlife. The rules is basically: don't. Crushing a tarantula is a great way to get a disciplinary action filed against you. Killing/harming something larger is a good way to spend a few days in the stockade. So there's a six foot bird going to town on this guy's forehead."

"I don't think it was trying to eat him. I think basically the bird was just being a prick."

"So pretty soon the scene begins to look like some kind of rodeo. The squaddie (we'll call him F***s because that's what we really called him since his name was so close to that) stands up and is now running too and fro around the rocks and shrubs with the emu in close pursuit. The captain tries to bring us together in an attempt to chase the damn thing away. We all stretch out in a line and start yelling and advancing on the emu. We get its attention. It charges us."

"Total chaos. The line breaks, we scatter, everyone yelling and nobody wanting to be the one caught by that damned emu. Someone has the bright idea of taking off his field jacket and waving it in front of the bird, I guess to add to the confusion, like a cape for a matador. Several of us try that. The result: several jackets replaced when we come back in a few days later. It sort of rumbles at us and just starts pecking at anything that comes near."

"We continue to scatter like roaches while the captain tries to bring us all back ("Rally on me! F***s, get back here!"... etc). Of course, whenever it heads his way he jumps back up on the bradley. Finally he unbuttons (opens the hatch on the bradley) and gives the order to mount (all aboard). So we haul ass for the door and cram ourselves into the back. Safely inside, we wait for the damned thing to wander off, huddled together for protection from a six foot bird in one of these: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/1BFV01.jpg/800px-1BFV01.jpg"

"Half an hour later the captain takes a look around from the turret, informs us that its wandered off, and everyone tries to go back to sleep. And I guess that's that."

"So I guess the moral of this story is that emus are ***holes and US Soldiers can be kind of wussy sometimes."

ai think Youtube might have a 500 video limit for video manager
I had to delete some of my unlisted ones, going there a roundabout route to avoid above error to get it back.
until I did. I could not get my channel on my Android app either
can still upload more, tested that but they are in effect, unlisted this newest one got only 5 views, I suspect from me embedding the link only.

...still, because management stupidly doesn't seem to care about cross training, I still had to drag myself in wile sick as the proverbial canine as I am the only one there who pretty much knows how to perform the duties I do

...still, because management stupidly doesn't seem to care about cross training, I still had to drag myself in wile sick as the proverbial canine as I am the only one there who pretty much knows how to perform the duties I do
Proof that sometimes "job security" (i.e,, "no one else knows how to do your job"...used to hear that a lot myself) can suck big time stupidly.

My next door neighbor (In his 50's) had 2 yap yap dogs that belonged to his mother before she went to a nursing home. They drove me insane, and he would winge about it to me all the time saying that the moment his mother goes into full time care, he'd get rid of the mutts.

He held true to his word... At least for a month.

Now he's got another two yap yap dogs, ONLY these haven't been trained what so ever, every morning at 6 am they bark right at my window and DONT stop at least until 8am!!! My moron neighbor ignores them and makes NO effort to shut the stupid things up! And when I get back home after a night shift, lets just say it takes me five hours to get to sleep!